Blood types!!

For simplicity purposes the fundamental blood types (without accounting for positive or negative) are:

A

B

AB

O

What distinguishes the different types of erythrocytes (red blood cells) is the "protein markers" or agglutinogens as they're specifically known.

So A type has A markers and so on.

However, O type has no markers at all.

This is important to your body because if you're type A then you cannot accept a donor with B or AB blood as your body will literally attack it (with your white blood cells) as it won't recognise or accept the blood and it'll deem it as an invader!

However, your body will accept O because O has NO protein markers, meaning your body can't distinguish the differentiation due to the fact that there are no markers to distinguish, so O is determined as being the "universal donor" because anybody can receive type O blood.

Type AB blood is therefore determined as being the "universal recipient" as it has both A and B protein markers so it will accept A, B, AB and O without any issue.

Here is a screen shot of an image from a YouTube video:

Why salt dissolves in water

Why does any substance DISSOLVE into another?!

In the case of SALT and quite possibly most other cases, the water molecule (H2O) literally pulls apart the sugar molecule (NaCl).

POLARITY! Some molecules have a greater POLARITY than others and H2O is a prime example, the Oxygen atom is HOLDING the bulk of the ELECTRONS within the molecule so we'd say that the Oxygen is the NEGATIVE end (because Electrons are NEGATIVELY charged), therefore the Hydrogen ends are POSITIVELY charged because there are LESS Electrons present.

An NaCl molecule is the same, the negative end is the Chlorine and the positive end is the Sodium.

Due to the fact that there's typically more water (water could dissolve into salt if there was more salt than water), we'll look at it from the this perspective.

The positive Sodium is ATTRACTED to the negative Oxygen and the negative Chlorine is attracted to the positive Hydrogen.

That's fundamentally it, the polar forces of the water molecule, due to strength and volume, rip apart the salt molecules.

Thanks

Adam X

Why blowing on soup cools it down

Lets take it to the molecular level!

You pour your soup into a bowl, chuck it in the microwave for 2-3 mins, wait for the ping then you take it out.

It's HOT!

It's too hot for you to eat immediately but you have 2 choices:

Wait for it to cool

Blow on it

Blowing on soup works in a similar way to an air-con system. 

The molecules that comprise the soup are JIGGLING because they're HOT and have lots of ENERGY. Some molecules will have EVAPORATED because they had enough energy to escape the liquid state. 

There comes a point where the molecules stop evaporating but they're still hot, too hot for you to consume even. We've reached a point of zero evaporation. Therefore we need evaporation to start again so we need to ENCOURAGE these hot molecules to leave the soup by literally blowing them away!

The HOT MOLECULES are taking away the HEAT with them, leaving behind a COOLER and more edible soup.

The AIR-CON reference is fundamentally because that works by BLOWING sweat off your skin, cooling you down :-)

Thanks

Adam X

Lack of posts

I fully aim to get posting again ASAP, I've set myself a 2 minute challenge to write as many new facts as I can remember! Here goes:

Snakes "use" only 1 lung, saves space when eating!

The Moon was only 14,000 miles from Earth when it first formed.

There is 400 million litres of WATER on our Moon!

A distance further away from you is easier to get to the LONGER it takes - SPECIAL RELATIVITY

Oil companies spend 1/2 a TRILLION DOLLARS every 2 years looking for OIL. If we harnessed he Suns energy, eventually we wouldn't have to spend anything.

Why wood rots

Wood, or rather the inside of wood, is a bit like tonnes of tubes that are attached via "doors" which are spaced-out amongst the tubes.

These tubes are are actually the walls of living cells, they have however been dead for a long time and literally only the skeleton remains. The hollow tubes, the cell walls, are the skeleton of those cells.

Fungi, attach themselves to wood and secrete enzymes which literally eat their way through the wood. As they eat they destroy the "doors" between the tubes and this creates vast open gaps in the wood, making it POROUS!

This allows water to invade the open spaces of the wood as it is absorbed through the pores that have been made by the fungi.

This makes the wood HUMID which actually helps fungal growth, which in-turn makes the wood decay quicker.

As the wood becomes more porous it also starts supporting bacterial growth aswell as they too favour these conditions. Fungi and bacteria team-up and eat through the soft SUMMER growth rings and then the harder WINTER growth rings until there's no more wood!

Thanks

Adam :-) X

Time really does fly when you're having fun!

Yes it's true! When you're care-free and happy, life seems to fly-by!

Your brain typically transposes 30 images a second - this is standard and allows you to digest info and go about your daily business.

However, when you are stressed or under pressure, your brain THINKS more, which makes sense as often you are searching for an answer to a predicament that you have or worrying yourself over something.

Now, because the brain is more ACTIVE in these cases it is digesting MORE info!! You are making your brain WORK harder, giving it more information.

This actually makes TIME seem to SLOW down!! SEEM is a strong word.

In many cases, this is how your BRAIN literally saves you from making a bad decision, if you are given a short time-span to make a decision.

Being trapped in an inferno, averting a collision, catching something are all examples of where your BRAIN appears to slow time down, thus you feeling like you're given extra-time to make a decision.

Your BRAIN is definitely transposing way more than 30 images a second in these cases. More images = more frames of reference = more decision opportunities.

Many thanks

Adam :-) X

Colour

The human eye can only perceive a small section of the electromagnetic spectrum. We call this section "VISIBLE LIGHT". Different colours across the spectrum correspond to different WAVELENGTHS of light.

Our eyes contain cells called CONES, which are sensitive to these different types of wavelength and allow us to see in COLOUR. Three different types of cone are affected by light in the RED, GREEN AND BLUE parts of the spectrum. These correspond to the PRIMARY COLOURS. Different light sources give out different parts of the spectrum, which appear as different colours. When combined, coloured lights appear as different colours. This is called the ADDITIVE PROCESS. Adding primary light sources in the correct proportions can produce the sensation of other colours in our eyes.

When light hits a pigment in an object, only some colours are reflected. Which colours are REFLECTED and which are ABSORBED depends on the pigment. This is the SUBTRACTIVE PROCESS. Looking at a coloured object in coloured light may make it appear different. This is because pigments can ONLY reflect colours that are PRESENT in the oncoming light.

Many thanks, much love, ADAM! :-) X

A bit about Kidneys!

The kidneys serve two major functions:

they keep the salt content of the blood constant, and they filter waste out of the bloodstream.

So, the main components of urine are (salt) water and waste products. The major waste product from cells in the body is ammonia, and the major waste product from blood is a broken form of heme called bilirubin. In the liver, each of these is converted into a less hazardous form: ammonia is converted to urea, and bilirubin is degraded to urobilins. Salt, water, and urea are all colorless, but urobilins (which come from degraded pigments) are yellow.

So, if you drink a lot, your urine will be more dilute and clearer, and if you get dehydrated, your urine will contain less water and be darker yellow.

Drugs!!

Not the dodgy kind you can buy!!

A drug is designed to either prevent or cause something to happen in your body.

Every cell of your body has RECEPTORS on its surface. These RECEPTORS receive chemicals that transmit a message to the cell.

Your body is full of chemicals, in fact, it is jam-packed with them. Your cells are constantly receiving chemical messengers.

Sometimes, you don't want the message to get there or you want a different message to be received instead - this is where DRUGS come in to it.

A drug is technically a chemical that intervenes and changes things.

A drug may help your body deliver more of the same message to a cell or it can lodge itself in a cell receptor to stop the message being received by the cell.

Random fact: the Greek doctor Hippocrates used willow bark as long ago as 400BC to relieve the pain of his patients.

Wounds can become infected with harmful bacteria if an antiseptic is not applied to kill them. Antiseptics are able to kill bacteria in many ways. The alcohol rubbed onto your skin before an injection kills bacteria by breaking up the protein that makes up their cells.

There are 2 main ways in which antibiotics work. One type prevents the bacteria from making its cell walls. Another type interferes with the chemical activities in the cells of bacteria.

Anaesthetic drugs are designed to stop the brain from receiving messages of pain.

Antiviral drugs work by blocking the chemicals the virus needs to reproduce.

Drugs go vigorous testing that can span 8 years.

What causes weather - wind

Wind comes from the churning movement of air heated up by the Sun. It moves from the equator to the poles and back again. It breezes in from the sea by day, and breezes back out again at night. Wind is always moving, but it never has a destination.
There isn't a place on the planet that accumulates wind. Some places seem windier than others, but not constant and getting worse all the time.
Wind doesn't stop, it has a continuos cycle like lots of things on the planet.
WIND MOVES FROM AREAS OF HIGH TO LOW AIR PRESSURE IN AN EFFORT TO BALANCE OUT THE AIR PRESSURES AROUND THE GLOBE.

You can say that winds starting point is the equator, not because it is "born" here but the FORCES responsible for its MOVEMENT are located here.
This is where the AIR PRESSURE starts to shift about. There is plenty of WARM AIR at the equator due to the bulge of the EARTH and the amount of DIRECT SUNLIGHT that hits it. The sunlight heats the air and the air then RISES, this creates a GAP below it and this GAP is now an area of LOW PRESSURE. As air naturally moves from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration (known as DIFFUSION), air moves in to fill this GAP, this rushing air is WIND.

The warm air that is higher up must go somewhere (remember, it's a cycle). Depending on which side of the equator it is, either drifts north or south, towards the poles. However, it doesn't go straight to the poles, after travelling about 30 degrees north or south (about 1/3 of the distance between the equator and poles), it starts to cool off and starts to sink (because it's the opposite to hot air) towards the ground. Some of this COOLER air will make its way back to the EQUATOR, filling the GAP left there by the air still warming and rising there. This makes a mini-cycle within the cycle known as a WIND CELL between the EQUATOR and the tropics located 30 degrees on either side of it. More WIND CELLS form between the areas of 30 - 60 degrees, 60 - 90 degrees and so on until you get to either the north or south pole. The entire planet is covered by this vast chain of WIND CELLS. The wind follows the shifting air, blowing north to south and south to north within these WIND CELLS.

Depending on where you live, winds often come from east or west, this is due to one very IMPORTANT FACTOR - THE EARTH IS SPINNING!

The Earth spins, taking the air with it. This creates a force called the CORIOLIS FORCE that puts a spin on the rising and falling air, making the wind cycle within each cell travel clockwise or anticlockwise, instead of straight up and down. It's a MESS! Seriously, we end up with a COMPLEX pattern of moving air, with alternating bands around the Earth having either westerly or easterly prevailing winds.

SEA BREEZE: again, this is kind of a mini-cycle within a cycle. It is caused by a smaller set of forces (hence the term breeze). The sea breeze is caused by the fact that the land heats up and cools down faster than the sea does. As the air is heated on the ground and rises, the air over the sea can rush in and fill this GAP on the land - giving you a SEA BREEZE. At night however, the REVERSE happens, the land COOLS faster (there's no heat - the Sun is shining on the other side of the planet). The warmer air over the sea is replaced by the air from the land. This in-turn creates a breeze that goes out to sea at night.

Thanks, much love. Adam :-) X

Collagen!

Collagen is a PROTEIN!
Proteins are made of long chains of AMINO ACIDS.

You've probably heard of a COLLAGEN in a cosmetic sense (plastic surgery - lips etc).

Hopefully, after reading this you'll know a lot more about COLLAGEN.

Collagen is found in all animals. It is multifunctional and can be found in various parts of the body. It is the most abundant protein in your body. The most occurring types of COLLAGEN are labelled I - IV. These four types of COLLAGEN are found in over 90% of the body in tissues including skin,bones, tendons and ligaments.

Collagen makes up 30% of your bones. Type I collagen found in the bones combines with HYDROXAPITITE to give strength and resistance to the bones.

Skin: the DERMIS layer of the skin is the thickest part and comprises of the PAPILLARY and RETICULATE dermis. The papillary dermis consists of fine fibres of type III collagen that make the skin pliable, while the reticulate dermis is made of the broad type I collagen and gives the skin tensile strength (the opposite to pliable). Overall COLLAGEN gives the skin everything it needs to work.

Absence of COLLAGEN in the skin causes wrinkles, there are various foods that you can scoff to increase your COLLAGEN, I'll put them in at the end.

MUSCLES:
Thousands of individual muscle fibres combine to form a a muscle. Each muscle fibre is covered by 3 layers of collagen. The innermost COLLAGEN sheath is the ENDOMYSIUM, followed by the much thicker PERIMYSIUM. The EPIMYSIUM is the last COLLAGEN layer. The collagen in the muscle helps it to contract and stretch to transmit force, which can be translated into motion or more strenuous activities like lifting.

Tendons, ligaments and cartilage:
All 3 are made of COLLAGEN. Type II collagen is found in cartilage. Collagen gives tendons and ligaments the ability to transmit force from the muscle and assist in the translation of this force to movement and exercise.

WOUND HEALING:
The COLLAGEN in the DERMIS is responsible for helping BUILD the skin back that has been damaged. COLLAGEN DEPOSITION is initiated by the body in a wound for the healing process. The right amount MUST be deposited for the skin to heal correctly.

FACTS ABOUT COLLAGEN:

Good sources of it!

Soy milk
Cheese
Dark green veg
Kale
Spinach
Collards
Asparagus
Red fruits and veg
Omega acids
Salmon
Tuna
Cashews
Pecans
Almonds
Brazil nuts
Avocados
Green and black olives
Cucumber
Celery
Vitamins A and C


Many thanks, much love, Adam :-) X

Water does flow upwards!

We all know that plants need water. Water molecules are key for a plant when it is photosynthesising.

Here is the equation for PHOTOSYNTHESIS:

6CO2 + 6H20 = C6H12O6 + 6O2

Note: the equation is the OPPOSITE for animal respiration.

Water fundamentally gives a plant it's shape, water makes a plant rigid and solid. If you ever see a plant that is wilting (floppy), it needs water!

Plants loose water from their leaves through EVAPORATION. Water molecules are attracted to each other due to ELECTRONEGATIVITY, this is because a water molecule has a heavily positive side and a heavily negative side. POSITIVE ATTRACTS NEGATIVE. So as the evaporated water leaves the plant it draws other molecules UPWARDS to take its place.

The ROOTS also PUSH water upwards once they've taken it in, this would be the plants natural way to get water to the leaves for PHOTOSYNTHESIS to occur.

You've gotta love plants!

P.S a plant is green because they use PHOTONS of a red and blue wavelength as ENERGY for PHOTOSYNTHESIS and reflect the GREEN photons. Making them GREEN. X

Water waves - what are they?

The Moon "draws" the water toward it. This causes the tides, whether it be neap or high tides.

As the water is "drawn", it will do so but the water will never REACH THE MOON! It's impossible! The Moons GRAVITY isn't strong enough for that to happen, this is the KEY point!

The Sun deserves a mention too! Technically it has a similar effect on the tides, if the Moon and the Sun are facing the same side of the Earth as each other, this causes high SPRING tides, if they are on opposite sides, again we can get high SPRING tides. If they are in any other position, we call that NEAP tides.

The Sun is 400 times further away from the Earth than the Moon is BUT the Sun is 400 times BIGGER than the Moon. Gravity is all about MASS, the BIGGER or the more DENSE the the MASS is, the greater its GRAVITATIONAL PULL. Distance has to be taken into account though aswell. Hopefully this paragraph explains the EQUAL (distance and size) effect of the Sun and Moon on our oceans.

Back to waves! You could say that water waves have a SHAPE, think of a CANDLE, when lit, the flame is shaped by GRAVITY! It's like a deformed triangle, it has a TIP! So do WAVES! It's just that you can't see it because the waves are so wide, the tip is unnoticeable. There'll always be a LEADING part of the WAVE and that's the TIP!

Due to the fact that the WAVE cannot reach the Moon or Sun because of the WEAKNESS of GRAVITY, the WAVE literally collapses. The collapse normally occurs on the shoreline because there's no MORE WATER to be apart of the wave. The COLLAPSE can also occur out at sea because the wave loses MOMENTUM (again GRAVITY). Waves follow each other as the PULL of the Moon and Sun on the oceans is CONTINUOUS.

Thanks for reading! Hope you get something out of it, I certainly enjoy writing this stuff :-)

Adam X

Why do things expand when they get hot?

Back to the atom!!

An atom will jiggle more the more energy it gets. Heat is energy and is carried by the PHOTON. A photon can cause an electron to jump to an atomic orbital of higher energy. The atom is now excited. An excited atom will have energy and wants to move. This is very much like a solid becoming a liquid, the solid receives heat and the atoms of the solid get excited, the solid melts as the atoms disperse or fly away.

Another way atoms can get excited is through friction. IE if you rub your hands together, the electrons get excited and your hands heat up. Your hand will EXPAND in the process, you can't visibly see this with your naked eye, but it does.

When our walking, your feet feel the rubbing of your footwear, your feet heat up, they expand.

The PHOTONS that we humans emit are of an INFRARED wavelength, you can't see them with the naked eye either.

Thanks, Adam. Much love. :-) X

Why is light weird?

According to the laws of physics, light is STRANGE!
Imagine you're chasing a car that's moving at 30 km/h and you're moving at 29 km/h, you are 1 km/h slower than the car.
You are very close to the car and can almost keep up.
LIGHT BEHAVES TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
No matter how fast you chase the light, it always moves away from you at exactly the same speed. Even if you were flying at 999,999,999 km/h behind a beam of light, the light would still speed away from you at a full 1 BILLION KM/H. You may as well be standing still!!

Thanks, Adam. Much love. X

How does my microwave cook my food?

It heats it up! Whilst this is correct, it's not holistically accurate.

Let's start with the known fact that everything is made of ATOMS. The microwave, the food and the dish/plate.

Microwaves are a specific wavelength and are made of photons.

The electricity (electrons) running through the microwave creates PHOTONS through the ELECTRONS being excited to a higher energy level of their respective atom and then dropping back to a lower energy level. The electron emits a PHOTON of the MICROWAVE wavelength which then travels at the SPEED OF LIGHT inside the microwave machine.

Most of these PHOTONS will be absorbed by the electrons of the atoms in your food. This gives the atoms energy and allows them to move. This softens your food and heats it up as the food is constantly being hit by PHOTONS. Some atoms in the food will evaporate (probably the water in it) and when the timer pings, the electron flow is stopped and thus so is the PHOTONS from being emitted by the microwave. The food is piping hot as its atoms have been excited by the huge flux of photons and it's steaming some atoms off still. The food (or rather the atoms) is now ready to be eaten.

Thanks, Adam.

Much love. :-) X

How long does it take for blood to circulate the human body?

About 1 minute. Here's the SCIENCE!

The average human heart pumps roughly 0.07 litres of blood per beat.

The average heart beats 70 times per minute.

70 x 0.07 = 4.9 litres.

The average human body contains 5 litres of blood.

All signs say 1 minute!!

Other factors are:

HEALTH
HEIGHT
ACTIVE OR AT REST

Thanks, Adam King :-) X

Why is urine yellow?

Urine is waste (we already know that), it is what is left over after our body has removed all the goodness and nutrients that we need.

Urine contains salt water too.

The major waste product from cells in the body is ammonia, and the major waste product from blood is a broken form of heme called bilirubin. In the liver, each of these is converted into a less hazardous form: ammonia is converted to urea, and bilirubin is degraded to urobilins. Salt, water, and urea are all colorless, but urobilins (which come from degraded pigments) are yellow.
So, if you drink a lot, your urine will be more dilute and clearer, and if you get dehydrated, your urine will contain less water and be darker yellow.

Thanks, Adam King. :-) X

The rock cycle

Rocks are made of grains that fit together. Each grain in the rock is made from a mineral, which is a chemical compound. The grains in a rock can be different colours, shapes and sizes.

Some types of rock have interlocking grains that fit tightly together. Granite is a rock with interlocking grains. Other types of rock have rounded grains. Sandstone is a rock with rounded grains.



Rounded grains - Sandstone:



Interlocking grains - Granite:

 

Porous rocks
Rocks with rounded grains are more likely to absorb water than rocks with interlocking grains. THIS IS BECAUSE THE WATER CAN GET INTO THE GAPS BETWEEN THE GRAINS. Rocks that absorb water are called POROUS.

Rocks with rounded grains are usually softer and easier to crumble because they lack the structure of rocks with interlocking grains. Plus, if the porous rock gets more water into it, that alone will make it softer.

Rounded grains with water effect:

Interlocking grains with water effect:

So from this, we can gather that a rock with interlocking grains will be more structured and durable enough to resist damage either via water or compaction.

Sedimentary rocks:
There are 3 main types of rock; sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic.

The formation of sedimentary rocks:
A river carries/transports many things besides water and one of them are broken pieces of rock as it flows in its given direction. All rivers flow to the sea and when the river meets the sea there is a great difference in depth, so anything that has a bit of weight will sink to the bottom of the sea. We refer to this as the rocks being DEPOSITED. These DEPOSITED ROCKS build up in layers from the seabed, called SEDIMENTS. This process is called SEDIMENTATION.

Simply put, layer upon layer stack on top of each other. As this happens the layers that are at the bottom will be compacted and crushed due to the weight pressure of the layers above. With this happening in the sea, water is squeezed out from between the pieces of rock and crystals of different salts are formed.

IT'S PROBABLY A GOOD IDEA TO MENTION HERE THAT ALL ROCKS ARE MADE OF MINERALS.

The crystals that form act as a cement because they cause the pieces of rock to stick together. This is known as CEMENTATION.

These processes make the type of rock known as SEDIMENTARY ROCK. This process may take MILLIONS of years for the SEDIMENTARY rocks to form but due to the nature of the CYCLE, SEDIMENTARY rocks are constantly moving on to the next phase.

This is the established order of the SEDIMENTARY rock formation:

SEDIMENTATION - COMPACTION - CEMENTATION

IGNEOUS ROCKS:

Igneous rocks are a product of the inner Earth - a very hot place that has the ability to melt rock. MOLTEN (LIQUID) ROCK is the product of melted rocks and is known as MAGMA. MAGMA does eventually undergo the law of cooling and when cool enough, IGNEOUS ROCKS are formed.

You may be wondering to yourself - isn't a rock a rock? True, but you can tell a tremendous amount of information from a rock and it's composition by taking a closer (much closer) look.

Igneous rocks are comprised of randomly arranged INTERLOCKING crystals. Now, the size of the crystals depends upon how quickly the MAGMA cooled and solidified. The longer the cooling process, the bigger the crystals. That is, they have more TIME to stick together and arrange themselves, meaning a larger crystal.

Metamorphic rocks!
The 3rd type of rock in the rock cycle. The key word to pick out here is MORPH - that is, metamorphic rocks are formed from OTHER rocks by a change in HEAT or PRESSURE. They are MORPHED from other rocks.

As we know, the Earth is constantly moving, whether it be spinning on its axis, orbiting the Sun or even the movement of its tectonic plates.
Earths movements cause rocks to be either crushed or buried. All this compaction causes heat via the pressure that the is applied on the rock. The heat doesn't cause any melting but instead causes a CHEMICAL REACTION. It allows the chemical composition of the rock to be change. The MINERALS that make up the rock are altered, giving us a NEW ROCK. The heat allows the reaction to take place as HEAT IS ENERGY or rather HEAT GENERATES ENERGY.

On occasion, METAMORPHIC rocks are formed when rocks close to some MOLTEN MAGMA and are subsequently HEATED UP.

A KEY POINT TO NOTE HERE IS: ROCKS THAT DO MELT FORM IGNEOUS ROCKS - NOT METAMORPHIC.

When a METAMORPHIC rock is formed under pressure, its crystals become arranged in layers. Slate, which is formed from shale, is like this. The slates on your roof may spring to mind here. Slate can be split into flat sheets - hence why it's so appropriate for roofing.

MARBLE is another fine example of a well used metamorphic rock and is formed from limestone. Metamorphic rocks can contain fossils if they were formed from sedimentary rock (the fossils would be compacted) but the fossils are usually squashed due to the nature of the sedimentary rock process.

METAMORPHIC rocks can be formed from either IGNEOUS or SEDIMENTARY rocks.


Weathering is also a key part of the rock cycle. Rocks are gradually worn down by the weather. There are 3 types of weathering that can occur:

Physical
Chemical
Biological

Physical weathering is caused by actual physical changes in the surrounding weather, changes such as temperature (increase/decrease), freezing, thawing, wind, rain or waves.

Temperature:
When something gets hot it expands - a rock is no different. It's also the same scenario if something gets cooled it contracts - a rock is no different. This constant expansion and contraction causes the rock to crack and crumble. In climates such as the DESERT, the temperature goes from one extreme to the other so this type of weathering is very common.

Wind has the ability to blow tiny grains of sand against a rock. These wear the rock away and weather it. Rain and waves too have the ability to wear away rock over long periods of time.

When water freezes, it expands, this is how many things are damaged IE water pipes and rocks are no different. Water will find get into anything it can, it can and getting into the crack of a rock is easy. Once the water freezes, it could either widen the crack or split the rock. It could take years for a very large rock to split as the crack could be very minor to begin with and be gradually expanded.

Biological weathering:
Animals and plants too can wear away rocks. Animals can set up home within a rock and create or widen cracks that split it.
We all have weeds in our garden and plenty in between the flags/stones of our paths, where there is soil and the ability to receive water, you will find a plant.
This plant may start small and stay small or it could grow to be very big. It's roots would cause the cracks to expand (it's important to note that the cracks may be minuscule but are still cracks). Eventually, pieces of rock would break away.

Me and you are examples of biological weathering, we tread on rocks often and the constant pounding will eventually cause wear and tear of the rocks.

Chemical weathering:
Rainwater is naturally slightly acidic because CO2 from the air dissolves in it. Minerals in rocks may react with the rainwater, causing the rock to be weathered.
Some types of rock are more reactive than others. Limestone is made of a mineral known as CALCIUM CARBONATE (CaCO3). When acidic rainwater hits the limestone a reaction takes place that results in the formation of new soluble substances. These are washed away and the rock is weathered.

The more ACIDIC the rain is, the greater the chemical weathering. Rain that is more acidic contains fossil fuels that have been burned IE oil.

Difference between WEATHERING and EROSION:
Weathering is the wear and tear of the rocks.
Erosion is the transportation of the broken pieces of rock from the weathering.


Examples of the types of each rock:

SEDIMENTARY: Limestone, sandstone.
IGNEOUS: Basalt and granite.
METAMORPHIC: Slate and marble.

Many thanks, Adam. :-) X

The Plasma state.

PLASMA IS A STATE OF MATTER, just like gas, liquid and solid. It is far less common with regards to life on Earth yet extremely common in the Universe as a whole.

You may well be familiar with the 3 aforementioned states of matter. The easy way to remember where PLASMA lies with regards to physical change in matter is this:

The hotter something becomes, the less structured the atoms are that comprise the substance.

Here are the states:

SOLID: TIGHTLY PACKED ATOMS

LIQUID: LOOSELY PACKED ATOMS


GAS: FREE-FLOATING ATOMS


PLASMA: ELECTRONS ARE RIPPED FROM THE ATOMIC NUCLEUS, PARTICLES WHIZZING ALL OVER THE PLACE - NO ORDER AT ALL.

What this shows is the more ENERGY something is given/ or has the less order there is because the particle is travelling much much faster.


Our Sun is in the PLASMA STATE - the Suns core has a temperature of a whopping 15,000,000 degrees C!

It is due to the PLASMA STATE that NUCLEAR FUSION can occur though because we have these PROTONS whizzing about all over the place and eventually because they are travelling at such a speed, they smash into each other and NUCLEAR FUSION has begun.